This smell was different, though.
No gasoline, for one thing—and those corpses hadn’t screamed.
“Pull over, Eddie! Jesus!”
“Are you kiddin’ me? We’re under fire!” he told DeLuca.
“Shit!” DeLuca keyed the intercom and leaned into the speaker, kissing-close, to shout, “Use the extinguisher, Tommy! It’s right behind you!”
There were thrashing sounds followed by more screams.
“Get on the radio!” Sawyer snapped. “Get some help out here, right now!”
“The radio. I hear ya.”
As DeLuca swung toward the dashboard, reaching out for the microphone, Truck 13 took another hit and began to fishtail. Sawyer fought the swerve, turning a deaf ear to the screams of agony behind him, but he couldn’t keep it on the road. Another second passed and he felt the front tires spitting gravel, losing traction. The armored truck rolled over on the driver’s side.
1
Clay County, Arkansas
Mack Bolan crouched in darkness, studying the “holy city” from a hundred yards outside its southeastern perimeter. He’d never seen a piece of Paradise on Earth before, but on the rare occasions when he pictured it, his vision had excluded razor wire and guards in camouflage fatigues, with military rifles slung across their shoulders.
Then again, Camp Yahweh wasn’t what most mainstream pastors would’ve called a theological retreat. Its population—269 at last report—was committed to a militant version of Christian Identity, the “seedline” doctrine that proclaimed Nordic folk the true offspring of Adam, while nonwhite “mud people” sprang from Eve’s adulterous affair with Lucifer in reptile form.
Camp Yahweh was a monument to racial hatred, but that didn’t make it anything unique in the United States, or in the world at large. There were at least a hundred similar communities that Bolan was aware of, from Alaska to the bayou country of Louisiana, high in the Sierra Madre or—like this one—tucked away in the Ozarks.
Venomous hatred didn’t make Camp Yahweh special.
The Executioner was in search of something else.
The eight-foot cyclone fence with razor wire on top was not electrified. He’d tested it on his first visit to the compound, after snapping photos of the layout to prepare himself for penetration. Bolan guessed they’d found the cost of generator fuel prohibitive in recessionary times, when even zealots had to pinch a penny and donations on the neo-Nazi fringe fell short.
He had the compound’s blueprint firmly fixed in mind, knew the routines of the soldiers on perimeter patrol and when they were relieved. He didn’t know exactly where the object of his search might be concealed, but there were only three apparent possibilities. One unit plainly served as storage. The sentries drew their weapons from another, prior to going on patrol. His third choice was the base command post, occupied by a bearded, long-haired character who could’ve been auditioning for a part as a nineteenth century mountain man.
Bolan rated the command post unlikely, but he couldn’t say for sure until he had a look inside. If he struck out on targets A and B, he’d have to try his luck with C.
But first, he had to get inside.
Bolan crept forward, boots and elbows digging at the soft soil underneath him. He was dressed in black, his face and hands painted to match. The compound wasn’t brightly lit, and while they had floodlights mounted in twin watchtowers, north and south, they weren’t illuminated at the moment. Bolan guessed that they would save the major candlepower for emergencies or combat drills.
Stay dark, he mentally ordered the sentries in the towers. Don’t look down.
Bolan was ready if they saw him, with a Colt Commando assault rifle slung across his back, a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle semiauto pistol on his hip and a sound-suppressing Beretta 93-R selective-fire side arm nestled in a quick-draw armpit rig. His other battle gear included extra magazines for his three firearms, a stiletto, a garrote, grenades and wire cutters.
He used the cutters first, selecting a well-shadowed portion of fence where wild grass had grown taller than usual, nearly knee high. He settled amidst it, waited for the sector guard to pass, then busied himself with the wire. Nocturnal insects covered ered the sounds that his cutters produced, snipping links on a line two feet high, then six inches across.
Bolan timed his move, slid through the flap, then sealed it loosely behind him with a black twist tie. It wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but the guards he had observed so far were young—for Nazis, anyway—and seemed to have no fear of imminent attack.
Indeed, as Bolan knew, there’d been no challenge to their compound at its present site. The first Camp Yahweh, in Missouri, had been raided by a flying squad of FBI and ATF agents in 1997, but the raiders were embarrassed by their failure to discover fugitives or outlawed weapons. The sect had called a press conference to crow about its “victory,” then pulled up stakes and moved to Arkansas.
There had been other changes, too. The former Seed of Yahweh was under new management these days, renamed the Aryan Resistance Movement. Its leaders were more militant, more outraged by the slow drift of society toward equal rights for all.
And if the information out of Washington was accurate, they had a deadly secret.
Finding it, defusing it, was Bolan’s job.
He lay in shadow, clutching the Beretta, while yet another sentry passed by, heedless of his presence in the weeds. When it was clear, the soldier rose and bolted toward the compound’s armory.
He reached it, tried the door and found it locked. Bolan was kneeling, pick in hand, ready to remedy that problem when a scuffling footstep sounded close behind him and a gruff male voice demanded, “Who the fuck are you?”
SIMON GRUNDY LOVED his life. It was a strange thing for him to imagine, knowing where he’d come from—foster homes and juvey hall, a half-assed motorcycle gang, state prison—but it was God’s honest truth.
Praise Yahweh.
Who’d have guessed that a habitual offender, malcontent and full-time badass would mature into an officer and gentleman, committed to salvation of his race and nation from encroachment by an enemy who made the Russians and the Red Chinese seem penny-ante by comparison?
Grundy supposed it would’ve made his mother proud, if she had crawled out of a bottle long enough to focus on her only son for ten or fifteen seconds in her worthless life. As for his father, well, Grundy would need a name to find that shiftless bastard, and it wasn’t worth the trouble after thirty-seven years.
The Aryan Resistance Movement was his family now, and that made Grundy proud.
He stood before the mirror in his quarters, counting brushstrokes as he groomed his flowing beard. Most of his troops preferred the skinhead look, but Grundy favored a more biblical style. It could’ve looked bizarre, but he believed his hulking build and forceful personality made him imposing, rather than ridiculous.
Grundy was midway through stroke ninety-five, just after midnight, when somebody gave a shout outside. He didn’t recognize the voice, heard no coherent words, but any breach of Camp Yahweh’s decorum was his ultimate responsibility. Grundy set down his brush, considered putting on a shirt, then stepped outside bare-chested.
Let the ladies look, if they were so inclined.
At first glance, from the doorway of his quarters, nothing seemed to be amiss. He checked the towers, then the fence, and found his sentries standing ready, trying to pinpoint the sound. They were having no luck, so far.
The voice had been a man’s, but Grundy couldn’t say if it had sounded angry, startled or afraid. He ruled out joy, since none of Camp Yahweh’s